Mayor Eric Adams announced on Tuesday that an additional $1.5 million will be invested in the Small Business Resource Network, allowing the program to be extended through 2023.

The Small Business Resource Network is a partnership between the city, the business community and the Five-Borough Chamber of Commerce. Its goal is to make assets available to small businesses during the pandemic so they can remain open.

Since its launch in 2020, over 10,000 small businesses have been connected to resources.

“The whole point of the small business resource network was to pull into one place, here are all the resources for you, a small business. Tell me what your top problems are and then I'm going to tell you these are the four places you should go to get the help that you need,” says Maria Gotsch, president of the Partnership Fund For New York City.

Though the program has several ways to fund small businesses, it offers more than just financial assistance.

"It's different things such as loans and grants, financial assistance, marketing assistance, mentorships, business strategies, and tech support,” says small business Resource Outreach Specialist Darry Saldana.

Richard Berroa, co-owner of Peruvian restaurant “Claudy’s Kitchen, says he was introduced to the program in the middle of the pandemic, and the resources it offered helped his business immensely.

When he and his wife Claudy first opened the restaurant in June 2020, the program connected them with outreach specialists who helped them with tech support.

With the specialist’s help, their website got a whole new look.

"We had a website to begin with. I was the one who made it. But I'm not a website expert. I didn't know about back ends, SEOs, search optimization, and that's what they came in with, their expertise,” says Berroa.